


Rhodey's Wisdom

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [10]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt Tony, caring Pepper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 18:26:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14314545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: Rhodey's here with them.Pepper's grateful, but she also sort of wants him to leave, because every time she's in a room with him and Tony, she feels like she's missing out on some type of joke, with the way Rhodey is always watching her.





	Rhodey's Wisdom

**Author's Note:**

> I suggest going back and reading the previous one-shot in my series before this to know everything that's been going on, but if you don't want to do that, basically Tony is in the hospital and Pepper is keeping him company

Rhodey is here with her.

Pepper's grateful, because even with burns spread all over his arms and having to be attached to an oxygen tank in order to breathe, Tony isn't willing to sit still in a hospital room while other people take care of him.  Pepper isn't strong enough or mean enough to grab him by the shoulders and throw him back onto the pillows, but Colonel Rhodes is, and he has no problem with doing it over and over and over again, even though it makes Tony cry out in pain.

"He'll stop when he learns his lesson,"  Rhodey had told her, after he had thrown Tony back particularly hard and Pepper let out an undignified squawk that might have been horror or just a stifled laugh.  "Until then-,"  And he pushed out his arm and threw Tony backwards all over again.

Still, part of her wants him to leave.  She feels strange interacting with the two of them, always feeling like she's intruding, and she can't help the feeling that Colonel Rhodes is always watching her.  She can feel his eyes on her when she pokes her head back in to inform Tony that everything is fine, when she rolls her eyes as he insists to pay the hospital bills of the intern that got hurt, when she assures that though this is a setback, it's nothing that Tony and Pepper and Obadiah can't take care of.  He watches when she covers him up with another blanket because he is shivering, when she coaxes him through all his jello and won't stop bugging him until he eats all of it ( _he's a terrible patient, honestly, she pities the doctors that had to deal with him because Pepper was there to help_ ), when she absentmindedly cards her hand through his hair, trying to make it look somewhat similar to how he always wears it, just to give them both a sense that everything is fine.

Rhodey's still there when Tony falls asleep, leaving the two of them to watch the television together.  Tony had wanted to watch the press reports of the explosion, and now they're both watching a tell-all on Pepper Potts, the one who walked through the non-existent poisonous chemicals to get the ball rolling.  To the public, she's now become the girl that gets everything moving when the boys can't get their act together.

(She says boys, but the media says men.  Pepper just thinks its fair, if they're going to insist on calling her a girl.)

"I don't want to watch this anymore,"  Pepper hears herself snap, but she doesn't make any move to turn it off.  Neither does Rhodey, so they just watch as Tony stumbles out of that helicopter and Pepper lets him lean on her so he can walk, all the way to the ambulance, because he did not want to appear weak in front of the whole world.  And she helped him do it, every step of the way, even though he was putting all the weight on her and she was a very small woman and he really should have picked someone else, but she wouldn't be complaining, because _he was here, he was alright, mostly in one piece, and she would never turn away from him, ever._

"You were worried about him."

Pepper didn't think it was a question, but because his face was turned away from her and she couldn't tell for sure, she answers anyways.  "Of course I was."  She digs her thumb nail into the palm of her hand, something she used to do when she had to go up and give a speech, because she had got it in her head that she couldn't feel pain and be afraid at the same time.  Like maybe the would cancel each other out.  "Weren't you?"

"Nah."  He stares down at Tony, and she's surprised at the expression on his face, how fond it was.  It struck her that no matter how rough Rhodey was around the edges, no matter what names he calls Tony and how aggravated he always was with him, he really did care for him.  "That son of a bitch could make it through anything."

There's a long pause where Pepper thinks that here, finally, was something she knew about Tony that Rhodey did not.  That even if the world thought that Tony was unbreakable, he was just a few cracks away from shattering.  That he was this scared, fragile thing that the world had decided was hers to protect, and hers alone, because no one else was ever going to get to see this side of him.  They wouldn't have to, because she would keep holding him together until the day she died.  She was strong enough for the both of them.

"I was worried." Her voice was just a croak, but Pepper didn't bother to stop talking.  Rhodey had seen her in her pajamas.  There was no hiding anything now.  "I kept trying to think of the last words I said to him, and how I couldn't even remember them."

"So you walked through a hazard zone just to see if he was alive."  There was something lurking in his voice, maybe a lecture in the waiting.  "You have to love someone a lot to do something like that."

Pepper sucks in a breath and holds it, one, two, three, four, five seconds. It's not enough to calm down the sudden panic that had rose up in her.

"Don't worry."  Rhodey is standing, now, one heavy hand coming down to rest on her shoulder.  She leans into it.  Pepper had always been a tactile person, even though there were only a select few she would ever let know it.  "You secrets safe with me."

"He's got to know."  Pepper dug her thumb into her skin again.  At this point, she was surprised that she wasn't bleeding.  "If you figured it out, he must have, too."

"You don't know Tony."  Rhodey flipped up the collar of her jacket, and for one moment, Pepper was on the verge of begging him to stay.  Telling him not to leave, that Tony needs him, that she needs him, that he should not leave someone sitting in a hospital room alone, waiting for a man she loves to wake up and try to escape.  She'd have to call the orderlies to stop him.  there's no way she's strong enough to handle it on her own.  "He wouldn't know love if it hit him in the face."

"Maybe I should try that sometime."  Pepper was smiling, even though she didn't know why.   "He seems more responsive to that."

Rhodey smiled, paused for a moment beside Tony's bed.  He squeezed his hand, and then turned back to her.  "For the record, Pepper,"  He looks like he wants to tell her not to worry, but that's ridiculous, considering where they're sitting.  "I think you've been good for him."

Pepper doesn't want to hear that.  He must sense it, because Rhodey just nods and backs out of the room without even a squeak of the shoes.

"He's not wrong, you know."  Part of her wishes that Tony might have been awake this whole time, just to have it all out in the open, because there's no way she could bring herself to tell him on her own.  "I do love you."  She switched from the chair to sitting on the edge of the bed, holding his unburnt hand in her two whole ones.  "I know it'd be easier not to, but I do.  What do you think about it, Tony?"

She's half expecting him to wake up, smile his science smile, the one where he finally found out that everything he was working towards finally clicked into place, even if it was just figuring out how to make DUM-E less of a dummy.  To squeeze her hand back, tell her that everything is going to be fine, that he'll take care of Stark Industries and in a few days from now, everything would be back to normal.  To tell her that he loves her or he doesn't, just so she could know, so she can finally move on.

He doesn't wake up.

Pepper tries to convince herself that its better that way, but she doesn't quite manage it.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


End file.
